You Love Me(You #3)(59)

“You want money.”

“My mom’s sick, so my cash flow is a bit tight.” He’s human again, the way he was when he first mentioned his brother, and he breaks eye contact. “My mom has cancer and fuck cancer is right because that shit is expensive.”

“I’m sorry.”

“And my girlfriend Minka… she’s a ten…” I hate it when men do that, when they rate you like they hold the cards and you’re all in swimsuits. “And a ten has certain expectations of a man and I want to hold on to my ten and we just moved in and the walls are a little bare for her tastes and she’s all about the reno, she’s way into antiques and she’s going for this Sweet American Psycho vibe…” I knew it. I knew his hair was on purpose. “So you help me keep my ten in antiques and I help you keep those Quinns off your back.”

I can’t say yes fast enough but then Oliver makes a face that reminds me of his failed screenwriting aspirations. He stares at the blood on the windows. “I know you, Goldberg. And it’s important that you know me. Gordo and I communicate in a very unique way and if he contacts me and doesn’t hear back in our very unique way, he shows Ray the pictures and you’re in a cage that smells a lot worse than this one. Point is, you make me go away, you go away too. You feel me?”

“I get it. I’m in.” And then I say what he wants to hear, the name of his show. “Poor Boys Club is on.”

Oliver puts the key in the door but then he hesitates. It’s a myth about cages and I’ve been where he was, I was just there a few hours ago, holding the key, aware that my life was at stake too. “When I was a screenwriter”—No, Oliver, you wrote one episode of television—“we had this phrase on the nose.” I’m not a moron but it’s kind of like hanging out with Seamus. Sometimes you have to let your Friends think they’re broadening your horizons so I nod like that phrase is foreign to me. “What you did to this chick tonight was too on the nose, too on brand. So when I let you outta here, you’re gonna behave. No more of the bad shit. No Instastalking Love, no dead chicks in the dungeon. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. You so much as steal a plastic fork from Starbucks and you’re done.”

Oliver turns the key. “Wait,” he says. “Do you have a 1stdibs account?”

I shake my head. “No.”

He lets me out of the cage as if it isn’t in my house and he hands me my phone.

“Download the 1stdibs app,” he says. “Pronto.”

I download the rich-people shopping app and I open an account and I look at him. “Now what?”

“Search for ‘Mike Tyson,’?” he says. “There’s a portrait by Albert Watson and you’re gonna buy it for me.”

I blow twenty-five thousand dollars on a photograph of Mike Fucking Tyson and Oliver stretches his arms—those pit stains are worse up close—and he asks me where I store my cleaning products. “Amateurs don’t know how to clean up after a crime. We don’t want the Poor Boys Club to end before it starts.”

I give Oliver a mop and I find a bottle of bleach and soon we’re scrubbing Melanda’s last words from the glass wall. Oliver sneezes into his elbow. “At my first job back home, I had to clean the women’s bathroom at the ferry dock. Nothing will ever be as nasty as that.”

“I worked in a bookstore,” I say. “This guy used to jack off on our National Geographics and my boss made me scrape off his jizz with a letter opener.”

“Jesus,” he says. “Maybe the Quinns aren’t that bad.” And then he winks. “Kidding, Joe. Kidding.”

Finally, we finish the job and the Whisper Room is spotless. Oliver is on his way out the door—See you on Menopause Avenue—and in an ideal world, I would call you right now. But we don’t live in an ideal world, Mary Kay.

I pick up Melanda’s phone and I enter the pass code and I prepare for the worst. You know it all now. You’ve had time to read, obsess over every detail. Your heart might be broken… if I did a good job. Did you believe it was her? And if you did, is this betrayal going to put you off men? Off me? What do you say to the woman who violated your trust for ten fucking years? I open Melanda’s text messages and…





22





Nothing! Your best friend shocks you with a revelation about fucking your husband and she breaks up with you via text message and all you said was: Be well. Xo. I go to Instagram and Nomi still follows Melanda—maybe you didn’t tell her?—but you unfollowed Melanda.

Women are strange. You’re in the library all day acting as if nothing has changed, like you didn’t climax for me in my house. Nomi comes in with muddy boots and you are Carol Fucking Brady. “Nomi honey, can you wipe your boots?”

And she is Cindy Fucking Brady. “Sorry, Mom.”

Last month, when you told her to wipe her muddy boots off she barked at you and flipped you the bird and you flipped her the bird right back. But today she’s calm. You’re calm. It’s all way too fucking calm and does Nomi know that you unfollowed her aunt? Are you pretending that you and your Murafuckingkami didn’t put on a show for me in my living room? Every time you’re within ten feet, I brace myself for you to tap me on the shoulder and ask if we can talk. We almost had sex! We have to talk. But you remain calm, distant. I poke the tiger. I leave Dolly in the middle of Cookbooks—you hate that—but you just move the cart out of the aisle and eat lunch on your own at your desk. The Meerkat comes back before we close up shop and knocks on the desk—you hate that too—and you smile. “Hi, sweetie.”